Digital Camera Reviews

A great camera review site that MM pointed out:

http://www.dpreview.com/

 

JavaScript: Today's Date

OK, it should be simple, but I keep having to look it up. J The following was compiled from these two sources:

·         Comptechdoc.com

·         W3schools.com

<script type="text/javascript">

function getTodaysDate() {

var curdate = new Date()

//  Get the day of the week as a value from 0 to 6

var weekday=new Array(7);

weekday[0]="Sunday";

weekday[1]="Monday";

weekday[2]="Tuesday";

weekday[3]="Wednesday";

weekday[4]="Thursday";

weekday[5]="Friday";

weekday[6]="Saturday";

// Day of the month

var monthname=new Array(12);

monthname[0]="January";

monthname[1]="February";

monthname[2]="March";

monthname[3]="April";

monthname[4]="May";

monthname[5]="June";

monthname[6]="July";

monthname[7]="August";

monthname[8]="September";

monthname[9]="October";

monthname[10]="November";

monthname[11]="December";

var dateString = weekday[curdate.getDay()] + ", " + monthname[curdate.getMonth()] + " " + curdate.getDate() + ", " + curdate.getYear()

alert(dateString)

}            

</script>

Pixorial

Pixorial seems like an interesting service. Adobe should acquire them and add them to their other web properties, in my opinion. J

www.pixorial.com

Here’s an excerpt from Pixorial’s recent press release:

“Pixorial lifts the barriers set by alternative video services and infrastructure constraints by making it possible to share video in its original resolution and duration. With Pixorial, consumers can collaborate with friends and family within the video footage versus having to send the finished product - making it a truly social experience. Consumers can also share editable video and allow friends and family to edit and mashup or blend memories regardless of format, source or duration. Users can upload digital video or ship all other video formats to Pixorial with an option to track it with GPS. Videos are made ready to be shared with friends and family in as little as ten minutes for digital and as little as three days for analog, depending on format.”

Scoopler

“Scoopler is a real-time search engine. We aggregate and organize content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. We do this by constantly indexing live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more. When you search for a topic on Scoopler, we give you the most relevant results, updated in real-time.”

http://www.scoopler.com/

Screenr and Highlightcam.com

Two (seemingly) very cool video applications!

1. Screenr – Screenr is a web-based tool that allows you to create screencasts (similar to Camtasia). It also integrates with Twitter, and allows you to embed or link to your tutorial. Although it’s a completely web-based tool, it does make you download a bit o Java.
2. Highlightcam.com – “HighlightCam is a webcam video service that automatically finds the best parts of your videos--and shows you just those parts. We make it easy to find where your cat did a backflip or a burglar broke into your house--and one click lets you jump to the same spot in the original video, to see and hear the whole thing.”

Inside the Microsoft Store?

An interesting Gizmodo article by way of MBM. It looks awesome, but has he points out they will actually need geniuses at the Answer Bar (their Genius Bar tentative title). Those support questions will be rough!

Google Sitemap Generator for your website

Google released a new tool in January of this year that seems pretty useful. The only painful part seems like installing it….

 A new Google Sitemap Generator for your website

Adobe Shortcut App for AIR

Just ran across a nice utility from Adobe that allows you to search for keyboard shortcuts for the majority of their programs.

 

Facebook 3.0 May Be The Most Useful App On The iPhone Yet

MSF pointed out a great preview of what the next version of the Facebook app on the iPhone will be like. Seems cool!

Layar - More Augmented Reality Fun

Yet another Augmented Reality example. Potentially very cool. It is currently available as a free Android application and expected to come to the iPhone 3GS in the future.

http://layar.com/

Here’s a bit more from Mashable.com:

Layar is a Reality Browser, which means it displays real time digital meta data on top of the physical world around you, as seen through the camera of your mobile phone. Point the camera anywhere, and you’ll see layers of information on top of real world objects; these layers can be real estate info, bars and shops, tourist information, tweets from users etc. Imagine sitting in an internet cafe and seeing what the folks around you are tweeting through you camera? Well, that’s exactly how it works.

Besides looking through the camera of your phone, you can also select map view, which then looks a lot like a regular GPS application. You can see points of interest (POI), and each one can be linked to video, sound clip, or a mobile site for more information; you can also play live location based trivia games, check route description to the POI and more.

With version 2.0, Layar has given access to its API to 500 more developers, which are currently developing more content layers. Having Twitter or Wikipedia info layers on your phone is nice, but Layar is going to need support from many more developers if the application is to become really useful. Current partners also include Brightkite, Yelp, and Trulia.

Information Is Beautiful

I thought this was a fun blog. Information Is Beautiful is a site that illustrates David McCandless’s passion for visualizing information with a minimum of words.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

“I’m interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut through BS and reveal hidden connections, patterns and stories underneath. Or, failing that, it can just look cool! My pet-hate is pie charts. Love pie. Hate pie-charts.”

The Most Interesting New Tech Startup of 2009?

Here’s a great article by Anil Dash where he makes the scandalous statement that the most “promising new startup of 2009 is one of the least likely: The executive branch of the federal government of the United States.”

As proof he offers several government websites that have launched:

• Data.gov, providing open access to feeds of valuable facts and figures generated by the executive branch.
• USAspending.gov, allowing any of us to drill down into the details of spending from various federal agencies.
• Recovery.gov, perhaps one of the best-known of the new sites, offering up details of how resources from the Recovery Act are being allocated.

“…We've seen the remarkable innovation that sprung up years ago around the API for services like Flickr, and that continues full-force today around apps like Twitter. But who could have predicted just a year or two ago that we might have something like Apps for America, the effort being led by the Sunlight Foundation, Google, O'Reilly Media and TechWeb to reward applications built around datasets provided by Data.gov. The tools that have already been built are fascinating. And, frankly, they're a lot more compelling than most of the sample apps that a typical startup can wring out of its community with a developer contest.”

Media Cloud

Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media.

http://www.mediacloud.org/

“The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data.”

Still No 64-Bit Flash Player?

Hmmm there is no 64-bit Flash Player available yet for Windows and Mac. Adobe is still testing the alpha version of the 64-bit Flash Player on Linux. From Adobe: “Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering upon Adobe’s commitment to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms.”

Of course, Silverlight is (at least, as of February) still developing their 64-bit plug-in as well.

Since users are starting to discover this issue, is it wise to try and detect for would-be multimedia viewers using a 64-bit browser? There’s a nice JavaScript example at the IEBlog decoding user-agent strings (window.navigator.userAgent) to illustrate this concept. Even though “browser sniffing” is an inexact science that is what currently happens on Adobe or Silverlight download pages – 64-bit browsers are redirected to another page.

I wonder how many users this affects? According to an article by PC Magazine Windows 7 and Vista default to the 32 Bit version for most users.

*

Adobe AIR is unaffected, at least. From the Adobe FAQ: “AIR is a native application runtime and currently supports 64-bit platforms as a 32-bit process. AIR is not a browser plug-in, so 64-bit support is not essential for it to function on 64-bit operating systems.”

Weebly

This seems like an interesting model for website creation.

http://www.weebly.com/

There’s a nice summary video, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOW7ALVVVUc

The New Search War: Google vs Facebook

An interesting article on Mashable.

Google still gets more than twice as many visitors as Facebook, but how might that change if Facebook and the new engineering additions from team FriendFeed figure out how to slice and dice that user data in real-time? No one has yet really cracked the real-time or social search egg, but if Facebook can do it, its approximately hundreds of millions of monthly visitors could become hundreds of millions of monthly searchers – and that’s very monetizable and very dangerous to Google’s core business.

And what of Microsoft? Let’s not forget that Microsoft’s Bing powers web search results on Facebook, already. What if the two companies mash it all together and Facebook’s real-time, social web search results find their way out onto Yahoo! (which will soon serve Bing search results)? That’s a very plausible eventuality, and another that’s very dangerous to Google.

Of course, considering how often Facebook is banned in places of businesses, I have to think that would be a serious handicap to competing with Google.

Actionscript 3: Checking Whether a String Contains Another String

I just ran across some great ActionScript string examples at Foundation Flash. I highly recommend reading the entire entry. I’m pasting a portion of it here so I can find it easily again:

var masterString:String = "Foundation Flash is great, all others are rubbish";
trace(String(masterString.indexOf("bad")));
//traces "-1" i.e. not found
trace(String(masterString.indexOf("great")));
//traces "20" i.e. found
trace(String(masterString.indexOf("great",26)));
//traces "-1" i.e. not found (after the 26th character (','))
trace(String(masterString.indexOf("Foundation")));
// traces "0"
trace(String(masterString.indexOf("flash")));
//traces "-1" i.e. not found
trace(String(masterString.toLowerCase().indexOf("flash")));
//traces "11" i.e. found

Foundation Flash: - More Useful String Functions

Foundation Flash: - More Useful String Functions

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Google Analytics Tracking API

This might be a handy reference to keep in mind. The Google Analytics Tracking API contains all of the available methods to modify the on-page code to customize data for Google Analytics reporting.

Microsoft's SharePoint Thrives in the Recession

This article  discusses how successful SharePoint has been for Microsoft. It also has a nice mention of MSF’s company, SharePoint 360. Pretty cool!

9 Must-Try Adobe AIR Apps for Better Productivity

I liked this list on Mashable: 9 Must-Try Adobe AIR Apps for Better Productivity

Windows Live Hotmail account in Outlook...and iPhone?

I was just reading about this feature and it occurred to me this could be a workaround to syncing your Hotmail information to your iPhone. (Hotmail -> Outlook -> iPhone.)

“All Windows Live Hotmail accounts can be used with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or Office Outlook 2003, regardless of whether you use a free or paid Windows Live Hotmail account. To access your Windows Live Hotmail account with Outlook, you must first install the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector for Windows Live Hotmail.”

Google to Acquire On2 Technologies

Google is going acquire On2 Technologies. Maybe You Tube will be featuring its video compression?

http://www.on2.com/index.php?id=487&news_id=681

Get external data from a Web page using Excel

You don’t hear me rave about Microsoft that often, but this feature is awesome! Ever wished you could get tabular data from a web page into Excel? Try the following:

1. In Office Excel, on the Data tab, in the Get External Data group, click From Web. The New Web Query dialog box appears.
2. In the New Web Query dialog box, enter the URL for the Web page from which you want to get data.
3. Click Go.

Here’s an article on this topic at Microsoft Office Online.

 

namechk

Another site to check username availability at multiple social networking sites

http://namechk.com/

Adobe Labs: The YouTube Livingroom

I ran across this at the Adobe Labs Showcase:

The YouTube Livingroom

“Allows multiple users to co-browse YouTube using the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service. Select a video, watch, and annotate it with your friends.”

 

Panoramic Pictures

This seems like a neat (and inexpensive) device if for panoramic shots:

http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/perfect-pano